Re: [RFC PATCH v15 2/7] locking/mutex: Rework task_struct::blocked_on

Lance Yang
2025-03-18T15:33:47Z

On Tue, Mar 18, 2025 at 10:11 PM Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@kernel.org> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 13 Mar 2025 23:12:57 -0700
> John Stultz <jstultz@google.com> wrote:
>
> > On Thu, Mar 13, 2025 at 3:14 AM Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> wrote:
> > > FYI, this is useful for Masami's "hung task" work that will show what
> > > tasks a hung task is blocked on in a crash report.
> > >
> > > https://lore.kernel.org/all/174046694331.2194069.15472952050240807469.stgit@mhiramat.tok.corp.google.com/
> > >
> >
> > Ah. Indeed, we have similar use cases. There's some slight difference
> > in when we consider the task blocked, especially in this early patch
> > (as waking tasks mark us as unblocked so we can be selected to run).
> > But later on in the series (in the portions I've not yet submitted
> > here) when the blocked_on_state has been introduced, the blocked_on
> > value approximates to about the same spot as used here.
>
> Interesting. Can yo also track tasks which takes other locks like
> rwsem/semaphore ? Lance is also working on this to expand it to
> support semaphore.
>
> https://lore.kernel.org/all/20250314144300.32542-1-ioworker0@gmail.com/
>
> Please add them for the next version.

Hi John,

When’s the next version expected? I intend to send a new version out
soon, and it’d be great if you could include it in the next version ;)

Also, since we have similar use cases, it might make sense to use
the same field to store the lock, encoding the lock type in the LSB as
Masami suggested.

>
> >
> > So I should be able to unify these. It looks like Masami's patch is
> > close to being queued, so maybe I'll incorporate it into my series and
> > rework my set ontop. Any objections to this?
>
> No :) Please Cc to me.
>
>
> BTW, I had a chat with Suleiman and he suggested me to expand
> this idea to record what locks the task takes. Then we can search
> all tasks who is holding the lock. Something like,

Hi Masami,

Yeah, that’s a really cool idea - being able to search for all tasks holding a
lock. Maybe we just keep it simple for now and extend it when we need to
handle more complex stuff like rwsem ;)

Thanks,
Lance

>
> struct task_struct {
> unsigned long blocking_on;
> unsigned long holding_locks[HOLDING_LOCK_MAX];
> unsigned int holding_idx;
> };
>
> lock(lock_addr) {
> if (succeeded_to_lock) {
> current->holding_locks[current->holding_idx++] = lock_addr;
> } else {
> record_blocking_on(current, lock_addr)
> wait_for_lock();
> clear_blocking_on(current, lock_addr)
> }
> }
>
> unlock(lock_addr) {
> current->holding_locks[--current->holding_idx] = 0UL;
> }
>
> And when we found a hung task, call dump_blocker() like this;
>
> dump_blocker() {
> lock_addr = hung_task->blocking_on;
> for_each_task(task) {
> if (find_lock(task->holding_locks, lock_addr)) {
> dump_task(task);
> /* semaphore, rwsem will need to dump all holders. */
> if (lock is mutex)
> break;
> }
> }
> }
>
> This can be too much but interesting idea to find semaphore type blocker.
>
> Thank you,
>
> >
> > thanks
> > -john
>
>
> --
> Masami Hiramatsu (Google) <mhiramat@kernel.org>